Tuesday, 22 November 2016

#7: Island Of The Lizard King

ISLAND OF THE LIZARD KING

Ian Livingstone

Reviewed by Mark Lain

Following
IL’s two masterpieces (#5 City of Thieves
and #6 Deathtrap Dungeon) was an
unenviable task and, unless book 7 in Puffin’s original series was the absolute
greatest gamebook ever written, it was unlikely to be viewed in the same
glowing terms as its two predecessors. Both of those books were very hard acts
to follow and it would have been an impressive achievement if IL had pulled-off
a third consecutive coup, so just what did he follow it with?

As
most FF fans know, this is the third part of a loose trilogy that began with CoT, then saw you leaving Port Blacksand
to enter the Trial Of Champions in Fang (Deathtrap
Dungeon) and this third book begins with some nice plot extemporisation
where you head away from Fang and decide to stop-off at the relatively hidden
away Oyster Bay for some R&R with your old adventuring friend Mungo. On
arrival in Oyster Bay, everyone seems depressed and tetchy and it soon becomes
apparent that the secluded bay village is being attacked daily by Lizard Men
from nearby Fire Island who are kidnapping all the menfolk to work as slaves in
the island’s gold mines. Overseeing all of this is an uber-baddie, the titular
Lizard King. Mungo decides he is off to Fire Island to save the day and you
inevitably agree to go along and help. Thus we have the plot – a mercy mission
to save everyone from slavery and kill off the root cause of the problem.
Hardly original for FF, but this was only book 7 and the series was still in
its infancy. In fact, this was the last of the Puffins that was initially
printed with the star covers (and a red spine, in this case) before all the
spines became the now iconic uniform green.

This
is the first medieval FF that goes with a human interest central motif, rather
than personal greed (WOFM, DD),
assassination only (CoT, CoC), or
heroic fame (FoD) and is the first
where your character doesn’t seem driven by self-aggrandisement of some form.
Instead, you are essentially just trying to help a friend and when, like all IL
sidekicks, he dies almost immediately after the adventure starts, your mission
becomes all the more personal. This is quite an interesting idea so early in
the series and it does make this feel a little more like you are doing
something rather more worthy than simple treasure-hunting or just murdering a
villain. An interesting juxtaposition of characterisation comes in paragraph 1
when Mungo tells you that his father died trying to complete the Trial of
Champions, something you have just arrived in Oyster Bay having successfully
survived and won.

The
adventure itself comes in three main acts: jungle/river/hills, the slave mines,
and finally a mountain trek to the Lizard King’s fort (via a Shaman.) This is
interesting too if put alongside the previous two booksas the three together represent the three fundamental RPG
environments - CoT was urban, DD a dungeon trawl, and IotLK is pretty much everything else
(beech, jungle, river, cave, mountain pass, castle) – which is a clever meta
idea by IL. On initially landing on the island, you can take one of two paths
across the beech which essentially offer two different ways of killing Mungo
(death by Giant Crab or death by pirate band) but there is at least a little
bit of replay variety here. Either way, Mungo gets it and you head off alone
into a rather primeval jungle full of carnivorous plant life, primitive humans,
and big insects/reptiles/amphibians to contend with. Following this, comes a
raft ride to the mines which are rather brief and I assumed they would be much
bigger and more labyrinthine for some reason. Presumably they just haven’t been
open for long? Next comes a mountain pass meander riddled with prehistoric
encounters, the central purpose of which is to find a Shaman that an Elf you
liberated tells you about in the belief that he will give you something
essential to help kill the Lizard King, then you enter the LK’s stronghold and
face your final challenge. One thing that strikes you after a few playthroughs
(and mapping it out) is that this gameboook is extremely linear, even by
IL’s standards. So linear, in fact, that the few path digressions that are
offered are only slight diversions that quickly return to the same path and
just offer slightly different versions of the same thing (eg: Headhunters vs
Pygmies in the jungle, rockfall avoidance vs sliding down in a rockfall in the
hills, etc) and you cannot fail to escape the mines as it is not possible to
get lost in them. Even more striking is that you can visit every part of the
mines in a single playthrough (if you move around it in one particular order)
which is very out of character for an IL book. Once you are in the “hunt for
the Shaman” section it does not take you long to realise that you have no
options of alternate routes (making it impossible to not find the
Shaman) and that you will not fail to find the Lizard King’s fort or, in fact,
assuming you don’t die, to find the LK himself as there are two paths within
his fort, both of which ultimately lead to him. Livingstone FFs are never this
easy to navigate and the usual “take one wrong turn and you’ve blown it”
Livingstone-ism is all but absent here. Even his ridiculously easy Forest of Doom at least has incorrect
paths and an essential item set that you must have to be able to complete it.
Which brings me to my next point – IotLK
does not demand that you have hundreds of very well-concealed items with which
to win. Instead, all the items you can find are a) presented on a plate
(especially the monkey which is literally standing on the path in front of
you), and b) are helpful, rather than critical, to victory. Granted, if you
reach the Lizard King without at least one of a monkey and/or a fire sword, the
final fight with him will be very tough (Sk 10 St 15), but it’s far from
impossible and you are never lethally penalised for not having a certain item
at a critical fail point, as there aren’t any. Yes, there are a few instant
deaths, but these are sparingly deployed and even failing Luck tests is more
likely to just hurt rather than kill you. Initially, this book may seem like a
typically hard-as-nails IL effort as you can die in just three moves at the
start, but most instant deaths are for doing obviously suicidal things and this
book is far from arbitrary like many FFs are. On the contrary, as IL FFs go,
this one is unusually generous and forgiving on the player. There are certainly
several tough combats with double-figure Skilled enemies and you have no chance
with a Skill yourself that isn’t in double figures, but the book gives you many
Skill bonuses and you can quickly regain any points lost by falling foul of the
nasties that are strewn about to hinder you. Ditto, Luck. There are many Luck
tests, but there are also umpteen Luck bonuses to be found. The only real stat
that you could find yourself hemorraging is Stamina and you are likely to
consume most of your Provisions pretty quickly if you get into too many combats
or fall into too many traps but, even then, a lot of the tough combats (barring
the final mountain trek) are only encountered by failing Luck tests or
blundering into traps and as long as you don’t catch a tropical disease or get
hit by rocks you are unlikely to get really hammered for Stamina loss outside
of combat.

All
in all, this book is actually very easy to complete and you are unlikely to
take more than two or three attempts to beat it, assuming you have a very high
Skill score of course, and this is a stark contrast to its two ultra-tough
predecessors which relied hugely on the acquisition of loads of essential
items, involved a lot of failed playthroughs and mapping to fathom out the very
fiendish true paths, demanded that you solve puzzles, and often had opponents
that would lethally trick you into losing. The biggest challenge in this book
is definitely the catalogue of compulsory and quite tough combats in the final
mountain pass trek, although the Shaman’s tests are deceptively challenging. By
this I mean that the actual undergoing of the tests is not easy and you must
complete three out of six and failing any one means outright failure. However,
three are simply stat tests and, assuming you have a high enough Skill and Luck
to have even got this far, these become academic. Two do require you to have
certain items which could be a fail point but, as we have seen, all items are
not hard to come by in this book. The sixth of the tests just involves picking
the right choice (out of only two) so you have a 50-50 chance of guessing right
making this one very easy. Now, here’s the real problem with the Shaman episode
– whether you pass or fail makes no difference to completing the mission as he
just gives you some info that you can just as easily guess about when you need
to employ it, although if you do know it already, it guarantees a nice warm
fuzzy feeling inside when you find the all-important monkey in the road and you
will definitely know to take him along with you. So, the Shaman hunt is
actually a bit pointless really and, being a key feature of plot, it does leave
you feeling a bit short-changed when you realise that it is not as essential to
victory as the book had led you to believe.

Further
to the over-riding ease of this book, the final showdown with the Lizard King
can be un-climactic. Having a monkey and using a fire sword reduces his Skill
to a pathetic 6 (Stamina is still 15 though), which, in context, makes him as
weak as most Goblins, a shield will give you +1 Skill, and wearing Sog’s Helmet
automatically wins you the first Attack Round of any combat, so killing him
will not take long. In fact, Sog’s Helmet overall makes even this book’s many
tougher combats (especially the successive fights in the mountain pass)
somewhat simpler.

So,
we’ve made a lot of just how easy and uncharacteristically Livingstone-y this
book is in the sense of its design and difficulty level, but that does not make
it a bad book. Actually, it’s a very good book with a lot to offer from the
outset. The backstory is interesting and compelling and you quickly establish
an obvious purpose and motive for playing. It’s all very logical and there are
no out of context moments which makes the whole experience feel very coherent
and inter-related. Of particular note is the way the book focuses closely on
its three main themes: the slave mines, Lizard Men, and the distinctly
prehistoric nature of Fire Island when compared to mainland Allansia.
Throughout the book you encounter evidence of attempted escapes from the mines,
both successful (eg: the man hiding in a tree in the jungle who will furnish
you with a particularly unhelpful and vague map of the island that is of no use
whatsoever to you) and failed (eg: evidence of someone having been dragged away
in the hills whose belongings you can find and actually get a useful clue from
this time), all of which really adds depth and a sense of the ongoing nature of
the mines as well as the (assumed) connection to the abductions in Oyster Bay.
The central concept of Lizard Men is naturally key to the book and, although
you don’t encounter any until you start to explore the mines, they play an
important repeated villainous role from there on. To add a bit of variety there
are even some rarer types including a two-headed version and a mutant one (is
having two heads not a mutation, out of interest?) The logically recurring
Lizard Men bring to mind the many Orc Guards in WOFM which also deployed its central minions very neatly. The sense
of Fire Island being rather less evolved than the mainland comes through in
spades and this is maintained very effectively from start to finish, from the
primitive humans (Headhunters, Pygmies) and the many carnivorous plants and
giant insects in the jungle section right through to the dinosaurs, sabre-toothed
tiger and primitive cavewoman of the mountain pass section. It would be hard to
talk about the cavewoman without mentioning that she is basically Raquel Welch
in One Million Years BC,
incidentally, but that is not necessarily a bad thing! On that note, it is
worth mentioning Alan Langford’s internal art at this point which has a
distinctly primitive sun-drenched feel to it and which suits the primeval
nature of the setting perfectly. There is definitely a hint of the Ray
Harryhausen to some of its source material, but that just adds to its
effectiveness and it’s especially hard to not be reminded of RH in the opening
Giant Crab encounter. Langford also does a good job of representing the
pathetic and semi-starved appearance of the slaves, and the horrors of the
Razorclaw and the Cyclops are superbly illustrated in my opinion, as are the
various Lizard Men. If there is one criticism of Langford’s art it would be an
echo of an oft-stated problem with the internal image of the Lizard King
himself. The actual illustration is not that bad but he does seem a bit effete
draped oddly on the battlement. The problem only really comes to the fore when
you compare it to Iain McCaig’s colour interpretation on the cover. Most
people, myself included, would be of the view that McCaig is one of the best
fantasy artists of his generation so any comparison with his work is probably
going to be unbalanced, but there are two key points of comparison to make
here: 1) his version of the LK is not naked, unlike Langford’s, which makes the
latter’s version look a bit unthreatening, and 2) IM’s version is attacking and
genuinely looks frightening, whereas AL’s is teasingly looking back at you in a
manner that is unsettling for all the wrong reasons! However, it would have
made little sense to not include an internal image of your primary target in
the book so we just have to make do with what we got and the rest of Langford’s
art is perfect for the tone and concept of the book.

Lizard
Men came into the FF world as a key protagonist with this book and their
subsequent use has always been sparing which I personally think is a good
thing. Everybody liked (and was afraid of) Daleks in Doctor Who but they just
kept coming back for more constantly and the mystique did kind of wear off
after a while. Only two FFs used Lizard Men as their central concept (this book
and Marc Gascoigne’s only main series offering, #31 Battleblade Warrior) so their threatening and dangerous
presence remains just that. It is interesting to note too that IL gave his
self-confessed favourite creature creation, the Shape Changer, another outing
in IotLK too, but this time it comes
at the end and is much easier to miss but it is nice to see it being used
again.

The
sheer imagination that has gone into making Fire Island work so well as a
coherent environment has also gone into the inclusion of some of my all-time
favourite items in FF which, again, have rarely been re-used, if at all: the
Pouch of Unlimited Contents is a fantastic idea with (literally) infinite
possibilities and the option to trap a Water Elemental in it is genuinely
amusing, whilst the initially negative effects of the Ring of Confusion later
turn out to also give you the side-effect of being able to see through
illusions, which is handy on at least two occasions. The special boots that
allow you to walk on vertical plains are fun as is the Potion of Clumsiness,
whilst even a spear has multiple points of usage (unusual in FF as the majority
of items tend to just serve one specific purpose), assuming you haven’t already
thrown it at a previous foe, of course.

IotLK is undeniably the weakest of the
trilogy but, if viewed on its own and without the inevitable comparisons that
are drawn from both the fact that it is the conclusion of the trilogy and its
unsympathetic position in the release schedule, it is actually a very good and
original gamebook, thanks in part to its unique setting, but also due to it
being light-relief in difficulty terms by comparison with the rest of IL’s
output. In some ways, due to its extreme linearity, it could be said to be even
easier than Forest of Doom but the
fact that the need for high Skill and Luck makes the suggestion that any
character, no matter how weak, can win, a lie in this case makes FoD ultimately that little bit easier.
Plus you don’t get the chance to go right back to the beginning and try again
as was the case with FoD.

When
this book was re-released by Wizard, rather than commissioning a completely new
cover art concept a revised version of the original Puffin art was created
which is unusually sympathetic to the book (and respectful to the original cover)
by Wizard’s standards. If anything, Wizard’s cover makes the Lizard King seem
all the more threatening and you do get more of an impression that he is a
potentially aggressive and dangerous adversary plus his fire sword glows which is how I always imagined it. It’s just a shame that Wizard
completely destroyed the flow of the intended trilogy by releasing the books
out of order. In Series 1 Deathtrap
Dungeon became #3, City of Thieves
remained as #5, whilst IotLK was held
back until finally appearing as #17, whilst Series 2 kept DD as #3, but moved CoT
to #6 and didn’t bother re-printing IotLK
at all the second time around. Wizard Series 1 therefore inadvertently allowed IotLK to be viewed more on its own which
removed the inevitable comparison with the other two books that the Puffin
series order causes. However, it does mean that the neat plot-linking
introductions and the meta RPG environment exercise were rendered meaningless,
which is a pity.

I
like this book as it makes a pleasant change to be able to realistically beat
an IL gamebook so easily and without endless mapping and failing at various
critical stages. Yes, you do need a strong character but there needs to be some
element of challenge and that is primarily where it lies here. It does not take
long to explore everything on offer and the scope for repeat plays is limited
by this, but the prehistoric overtones and Lizard Man-centric concept are a
nice change and there is plenty of unique material to make this one very
worthwhile. IotLK has taken a lot of
criticism over the years from people who say it is nowhere near as inventive or
as challenging as its two forebears but I don’t think that is what IL was
aiming for with this offering. Instead we get a plot driven by necessity rather
than ego, a very well-planned and unified environment, and an ultimately very
satisfying experience.